In the United States, Optional Practical Training (OPT) is a period during which undergraduate and graduate students with F-1 status who have completed or have been pursuing their degrees for one academic year are permitted by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to work for one year on a student visa towards getting practical training to complement their education.
Foreign students currently enrolled at a U.S. university can receive full-time or part-time work authorization through Curricular Practical Training.
[5] On April 2, 2008, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Michael Chertoff announced a 17-month extension to the OPT for students in qualifying STEM fields.
For the 17-month OPT extension, a student must have received a science, technology, engineering, or mathematics degree as defined by USCIS.
[20] Note that the counts here are of receipts, approvals, denials or revocations that happened in the fiscal year, regardless of when other activities surrounding that application occurred.
The organization maintains data on the number of international students as part of its Open Doors project, supported from a grant by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs in the U.S. Department of State.
[6] The STEM extension appears to be directly attributable to Congressional testimony by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, March 12, 2008.
The OPT STEM extension announced in April 2008 was challenged in a lawsuit by the Immigration Reform Law Institute filed on May 31, 2008.
[30][31] A November 20, 2014 memo by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Charles Johnson outlining proposed executive action on immigration endorsed by President Barack Obama included some suggested changes to the OPT program.
[33][34] In August 2015, a US federal court gave the green light to a lawsuit challenging the 17-month OPT STEM extension, filed by the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers and three IT workers who claimed that the OPT STEM extension had created unfair low-wage competition that had materially hurt them.
The agency did add a requirement that the employer attest to the non-displacement of U.S. workers, to address concerns raised in the STEM extension lawsuit challenge.
[44][45][46] However, the Trump administration ultimately left out OPT from his executive actions due to White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Coordination Chris Liddell rallying universities against any restrictions on the program.
For employers, hiring an OPT worker amounts to a 15.3% discount per student compared to an American citizen or permanent resident.
Howard University Professor of Public Policy Ron Hira commented on the government lawsuit "Oracle is not alone in favoring foreign workers who can be paid less because they’re tied to a company by their visa or work permit.
In fact, the industry is using the visa programs for cheaper guest workers, undercutting U.S. workers, damaging the U.S. talent pipeline, and exacerbating its woeful record on workforce diversity.”[51] Policy scholars and detractors of OPT have noted that Congress never provided F-1 visa foreign students the ability to work besides a three-year pilot program included in the Immigration Act of 1990 that ended.
The incentive for many foreign students is to obtain work authorization in the United States, which universities take advantage of.
[53][54][55][56] Lawmakers have expressed concerns that vulnerabilities in the work authorization program expose the United States to foreign theft of intellectual property, especially from China.
These companies created fraudulent employment documents so foreign graduates could stay in the United States illegally.
[57] Labor experts have noted how the optional practical training is primarily a guestworker program for employers, not an educational one.